


I hunt for you with bloody feet

by ginwhitlock



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Set in Arizona, bella is sad, jasper does harbor a crush but not mentioned, jasper is a savior, new moon, twilight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26035474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginwhitlock/pseuds/ginwhitlock
Summary: Jasper met Bella before she came to Forks
Relationships: Jasper Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 126





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble. Not beta’d.

He freezes ten minutes outside of a Southwestern dry county. It’s only just after eight but he can feel the soft press of a crescent moon waning over his diamond skin. He breathes in the dusty air like he needs to. Like he wants it in his lungs and his bones and his throat. 

There’s a girl and she’s drowning— or something like drowning, the water breaching her windpipe in hope of suffocation— a whiskey bottle is placed at the edge of the river in sacrifice. She’s laughing like the current isn’t planning to sweep her under. It’s a horrible sound. Crushed gravel rolling around her molars. The chill of night is creeping into the waves and he’s afraid for the first time in a decade. She’s out and on land before he can worry about the socks in his boots becoming logged. 

This is the first time she’s ever seen him. Fingers like a medic trying to find a pulse she’s not willing to give him. Her eyes are slits as he picks up on her heartbeat in the air, her mouth heavy with freshwater and regret and everything else he can taste without looking at her. Her hands on his arms tell him the story of a girl with no place to call home, no one waiting for her when she gets back. Her mother will be home in the morning. Her father sitting at the bus stop outside of the airport she will fly to the next day. His curls are lying limp on his brow as he swears on everything he knows and crushes down the wave of want that spreads through him at the smell of her blood. 

She’s in bed a mile away before he thinks about returning to Washington. Not a year later would she finally recognize the man that saved her from the lullaby of the drowned— as he lunged for her throat on her eighteenth birthday. 

His lips gave him away.


	2. The Ten Things Jasper Knows Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is Jasper’s POV of the original Drabble, in a listed poem format

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be the only extra installment for the foreseeable future. I was heavily inspired to write this so y’all shall see it!

  1. There’s a girl at the edge of a river. She has hair like a wild stallion and a scream like soap bubbles in winter. She’s drowning. The undercurrent takes her breathing. It pulls and pulls, like a backwards baptism. You know this water. You know how dangerous the idea of a fresh sip truly is this far south. You know it will only take. And sacrifices are not meant to be returned. _You wonder if she planned to be a gift._
  2. The glisten of her skin under the low slip of blue makes you want to pray. It makes you hungry for something you know the name for, something you know how to get. Even here, her bust looks full enough to burst. Skin the tint of clean reminds you of your grandmothers claw foot. The one she died in.
  3. A stray beacon of sun attempts to burn through your temple. Diamond skin on full view to the sunset. It aims again, this time between your dusty shoulders— as if to push. To set your hundred year-old feet in motion. _Doesn’t anyone understand how deadly your destiny is?_
  4. Nothing bad is supposed to happen this far from the border. The woman will the wild eyes is gone and the nights of lashings are behind you. But the sun is kissing the first breath of land in hours, and you know the Devil plays best in the dark.
  5. This feels like betrayal.
  6. You never get to take off your boots. Knee deep in southwestern mud, salty like sour pasta water (you thought rivers were supposed to be fresh). Your forehead drips something like blood. Like vomit. She almost pulls you in with her.
  7. Her body is heavy like a pyre. Like a monument. A holy temple to be worshipped when the music dies. With her in your arms you feel like an old-time preacher man at the rapture. Flopping onto the embankment does nothing for the familiar battle hymn in your head.
  8. She’s coughing up more than liquid and all you can do is watch. She’s holding you by the jaw and blinking so close to your steel skin you think you might drown too. She whispers too loud for your ears.
  9. You never thought you could be kissed like this. She had slipped and fell into your mouth before the moon overcame her barely-there dress and all you could think about was how she tasted like your first communion.
  10. Bella Swan wasn’t supposed to remember you. She was supposed to lie in her bed half a world away forever, and you were to be a soldier at your wife’s side until the end of eternity. _You weren’t supposed to let her live either._




End file.
